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Birders often think sparrows are too difficult to identify. Muise will attempt to "demystify" the process of identifying the various sparrow species. Spring bird walks: have you heard the birds starting to sing? join us as we witness the miracle of the northward migration.
Birders often think sparrows are too difficult to identify. Muise will attempt to "demystify" the process of identifying the various sparrow species. Spring bird walks: have you heard the birds starting to sing? join us as we witness the miracle of the northward migration.
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Birders often think sparrows are too difficult to identify. Muise will attempt to "demystify" the process of identifying the various sparrow species. Spring bird walks: have you heard the birds starting to sing? join us as we witness the miracle of the northward migration.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Verfügbare Formate
Als PDF, TXT herunterladen oder online auf Scribd lesen
Voice of the Oconee Rivers Audubon Society April 2009 Vol. 20 No. 4
Next Meeting Spring 2009 Bird Walks & Field Trips
Thursday, April 2, 7:00 p.m. Bird Walks: Sandy Creek Nature Center Have you heard the birds starting to sing? Time to get outdoors and join the spring bird walks, which ORAS Charlie Muise, Georgia Important Bird Areas (IBA) sponsors jointly with Sandy Creek Nature Center. Coordinator, will discuss “Sparrow Identification” at Whether you are an experienced birder or a beginner, the April meeting. Sparrows are often overlooked or join us as we witness the miracle of the northward even ignored by birders who think sparrows are too migration. Come to the monthly meeting or email difficult to identify. But sparrows are no more Jonathan Gray at fieldtrip@oconeeriversaudubon.org challenging than several other groups of birds. The for information about specific bird walks and field trips. subtle beauty and interesting lifestyles exhibited by • March 28 8:00 a.m., Sandy Creek Park sparrows can make them very appealing to watch. last lot on Campsite Drive across dam Muise will attempt to “demystify” the process of • April 4 8:00 a.m., Whitehall Forest identifying the various sparrow species found in South Milledge Avenue & Whitehall Road Georgia. Using photos taken of birds both in the field • April 11 8:00 a.m., Sandy Creek Nature Center and in the hand during banding operations, he will SCNC Allen House discuss the most important clues to look for when one • April 18 8:00 a.m., State Botanical Garden sees a sparrow. He will also talk about some common upper parking lot (Day Chapel) identification pitfalls to avoid—including some which • May 2 8:00 a.m., Sandy Creek Nature Center are shown in several popular field guides. (Cook’s Trail Cleanup) SCNC Allen House Following the main program will be a brief update Out-of-Town Field Trips: on the status of Georgia’s Important Bird Areas • April 25 Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center program, with a question/answer session. 6:00 a.m. Meet at Shops of South Athens Lot at Meetings are held…the first Thursday of the month at Milledge Avenue near Bypass 7:00 p.m. To get to the Nature Center, take Highway • May 9 Kennesaw Mountain 441, exit # 12, off the north side of the perimeter, go 6:00 a.m. Meet at Shops of South Athens Lot at north on 441 approximately one mile, and turn left at Milledge Avenue near Bypass the Sandy Creek Nature Center sign displaying this • May 16 Ivy Log Gap Road / Sosebee Cove logo: 6:00 a.m. Meet at Homewood Shopping Center Prince Avenue/Jefferson Road and the Bypass
Youth Birding Competition
from http://www.georgiawildlife.org/enewsletters.aspx The 2009 Youth Birding Competition blends fun, challenges, and conservation on a statewide scope. The fourth annual competition is set for April 25-26, with a banquet and awards ceremony scheduled the evening of April 26 at Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center. Registration of teams from kindergarteners to high school seniors is Go left at the end of this short road. The ENSAT in full swing, with the deadline being March 31. For bu1ilding is a short way down the road on your right. details, see http://www.georgiawildlife.com Wekiva Bird Watching (Part One) behind the islands. Still well before sunrise, we by Tim Homan inadvertently snuck right past a green heron standing on the tip of a mid-stream branch poking five feet above Page and I took a bird-watching canoe trip on Florida’s the surface from its underwater windthrow. Its startled eyes betrayed momentary fear and confusion as the Wekiva River during Christmas vacation last current slowly carried our canoe even with the snag. December. The trick was to find a spring-fed river, one Instinct’s quick wisdom seized command; the heron immune to Florida’s ongoing drought, far enough south obeyed. It collapsed its neck like an accordion and for warm days and far enough north for cool nights to remained motionless, trusting its life to concealment muzzle the mosquitoes. The Wekiva worked out well; and the murky light of dawn. Willing itself physically we had plenty of water, warm days, and never had to and psychologically inconspicuous, the wader’s eyes use our headnets. were turned away from us and its bill was hunched into The public land surrounding the river, mostly to the its shoulder blades by the time our stern passed its north, is not wilderness, but it is wild enough for bear, perch. bobcat, and limpkin—the bird voice of those Near our turn-around point, we spotted a small dark disembodied, Tarzan-movie wails, foreshadowing the duck floating down the middle of the Wekiva ahead of jungle’s black-magic mystery and whip-snap quick us. The duck, moving faster than a passive float, gained danger. The Wekiva was also wild enough to join an on us every time we stopped to twist its image into exclusive club: the National Wild and Scenic Rivers focus. But we couldn’t identify the duck forty yards System. But best of all, the Wekiva’s wetlands halted ahead in the grey light. So we did what birders do: we the northwestern spread and splay of Orlando dead in matched the bird’s general physical characteristics and its asphalt tracks. behavior to the patterns of our experience. And came up We had decided to awaken early on our last day, with our best guess—a female hooded merganser. In postponing a proper breakfast of bloatmeal, so that we our winter-canoeing experience, female hooded could be on the water well before the first slanting rays mergansers were the only small, all dark river ducks to of sunrise. We wanted to have the Wekiva and its regularly float right down the stream, sculling ahead wildlife all to ourselves before breaking camp and rather then taking flight. heading upstream to our shuttle. So we set our internal We closed the gap as the would-be merganser turned alarms to full bladder and wriggled out of our bags sideways to us while rounding a bend. We quickly while the forest floor behind our tent, studded with made a positive ID. It wasn’t a merganser at all; it was a stalagmite cypress knees, was still raven black. With grebe, a pied-billed grebe, headlights strapped around our foreheads, we gathered its bill unpied in winter. gear and boiled river water for coffee and hot chocolate On the way back a to be carried in the canoe. When night thinned to dark great blue tensed, turned grey dawn, we launched our Prospector into the lightly away from the bank, then misted river. Festoons of Spanish moss, one of the lifted off in slow-winging botanical signatures of the deep South, draped overhead flight. Once airborne and as we moved from the backwater past an island into the out of reach of retribution, current. the heron screeched We stroked slowly and silently downstream, eyes several choice peering through the early dawn. A brace of wood ducks cursewords—brought up rocketed from the nearby aquatic vegetation, the guttural and grating from deep in its long throat—to let female’s I’m-outta-here squeals confirming our soft- us know just what it thought about having its early spoken “woodies.” A small flock of ibis followed their morning hunt interrupted. Great blues possess the curved bills downriver, flapping toward their morning’s uncanny ability Sketch by Kirsten Munson to retch up noodling. The eye bumps of a small gator slowly sunk curse words, to produce those harsh Paleozoic below the surface at a backward angle. We floated expletives, because they are really only half bird. That’s below two anhingas—the first a buffy-necked female, right. They are actually combo creatures: half bird and the other a velvety, black-necked male—perched above half spear-headed snake disguised with short feathers. the same side of the river a hundred yards apart. Closer to camp, Page said “deer” as I followed the We held motionless as an otter dove and surfaced, point of her paddle to lily pads crowned with the rack of porpoising its way effortlessly upstream against an an eight-point buck standing deep in the Wekiva. island on river right. The otter swam like it was made of Downstream, a great egret flew low over the now a single supple muscle, a wild and flowing energy, reflective river, its water and light wings flapping in quick and capable in the water. Great blue heron, great rhythmic unison with the feathered ones. Each egret, and little blue heron—both the yearling white downstroke pulled the ghost wings up in reverse ones and the mature blue ones—were staking claims to marionette. Each downstroke conjured a somewhat fishing spots in the slow, heavily vegetated waters flattened, eye-shaped loop, the two perfect egrets aligned north and south, the white wing tips touching Birds and Climate Change for an instant east and west. Each wingbeat created from http://www.audubon.org/bird/bacc/index.html everyday water magic, one of the earth’s many neglected graces. Birders know that water has more Nearly 60% of the 305 species found in North America than three forms; they know water can change into in winter are on the move, shifting their ranges egrets flying white across a nether world of forested northward by an average of 35 miles. Audubon sky. scientists analyzed 40 years of citizen-science We passed the green heron again, this time further Christmas Bird Count data—and their findings provide away, as the sun breached Florida’s flat horizon. This new and powerful evidence that global warming is time the bird’s instinct made a radically different having a serious impact on natural systems. Northward decision, a defensive stratagem to fake fight and take movement was detected among species of every type, flight. This time the kinetic energy in the bird’s body including more than 70 percent of highly adaptable could no longer hold tight. At the last second, its neck forest and feeder birds. jack-in-the-boxed upward with spring-loaded speed, Only grassland species were an exception—with seemingly beyond physiological limits, as its chestnut only 38 percent mirroring the northward trend. But far neck feathers ruffed out for maximum intimidation and from being good news for species like Eastern surprise. After a one count, the little heron beat away Meadowlark and Henslow's Sparrow, this reflects the into the shadowed undergrowth. Pale spears of sunlight grim reality of severely-depleted grassland habitat and lanced into the tops of trees as we neared the island suggests that these species now face a double threat marking our turn toward breakfast. from the combined stresses of habitat loss and climate (to be continued next month) adaptation. It is the complete picture of widespread movement and the failure of some species to move at all that Going Green for illustrate the impacts of climate change on birds. They the Birds! are sending us a powerful signal that we need to ORAS now has eight 1) take policy action to curb climate change and its dollar shopping bags for impacts, and sale at Nature’s Outpost, 2) help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to unavoidable now located at 1021 habitat changes, even as we work to curb climate Parkway Blvd., which is change itself. in front of Kohl's. Each bag is made of five recycled two-liter bottles. Help the Another Inconvenient Truth environment by carrying a bag made from trashed soda At the March ORAS meeting, environmental activist bottles that would otherwise end up in a landfill. JC Corcoran discussed “Another Inconvenient Truth: Livestock Production is a Leading Cause of Global International Migratory Bird Day Warming,” explaining the global climate impacts of a The International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) Theme meat-based diet. One source he mentioned, the U.N. for 2009 is “Celebrating Birds in Culture: Connecting report “Livestock’s Long Shadow,” provides a somber, Birds, Habitats, and People.” IMBD is officially but difficult to absorb, commentary on how diet choices celebrated on the second Saturday in May in the U.S. affect one’s carbon footprint. Scientific American’s and Canada. For details, see http://www.birdday.org/ February 2009 “How Meat Contributes to Global Warming” summarizes “Livestock’s Long Shadow” thus: Give the Gift of Audubon! Our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), For an introductory National Audubon Society methane, nitrous oxide, and the like—to spew into membership (which includes Audubon magazine, local the atmosphere than either transportation or membership, and a subscription to The Yellowthroat), industry. mail this form with a $20.00 check payable to NAS to Current production levels of meat contribute Oconee Rivers Audubon Society between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of PO Box 81082 “CO2-equivalent” greenhouse gases the world Athens, GA 30608 produces every year. It turns out that producing half Name______________________________________ a pound of hamburger for someone’s lunch—a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards—releases as Street______________________________________ much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving City, State, Zip_______________________________ a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles. (http://www.sciamdigital.com and http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a0701e/a0701e00.HTM) Sightings Oconee Rivers Audubon Society Reported at the March meeting: President Vanessa Lane • Great Blue Heron, Sarah Cliett, Danielsville, President@oconeeriversaudubon.org 2/15/09 • American Woodcocks, Great Horned Owls, Vice-President Edwige Damron Eugenia Thompson, SE Clarke Co., 2/10/09 vp@oconeeriversaudubon.org • American Kestrel, Eugenia Thompson & Dennis Treasurer Jim McMinn Rice, Hwy 15, Greene Co., 2/21/09 treasurer@oconeeriversaudubon.org • Belted Kingfisher (pair w/ nest hole), Eugenia Secretary Mary Case Thompson & Dennis Rice, Lake Oconee, 2/21/09 secretary@oconeeriversaudubon.org • Hooded Merganser (pair), Linda Russell, Belmont Road, 2/25/09-3/5/09 The Yellowthroat • Purple Martins, Mark Freeman & Carole Ludwig, Published monthly by the Colham Ferry Road, 3/5/09 Oconee Rivers Audubon Society • Peregrine Falcons, Kate Mowbray & Walt Cook, PO Box 81082 Athens, GA 30608 Jocassee Gorge, Horsepasture, SC, January 2009 Submit information to the address above or by e-mail to • Wood Storks, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Red yellowthroat@oconeeriversaudubon.org. Articles, artwork, Knots, Kate Mowbray, Jekyll Island, 2/22/09 notices, and sighting reports welcomed. The deadline for • Parula (audible), John Willis, Cedar Creek, 3/5/09 submissions is the first Thursday of each month. All articles and • Virginia Rail, Snow Goose, Vanessa Lane, Bear artwork are copyrighted, and all rights are reserved by the Creek Reservoir authors. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of Oconee Rivers Audubon Society.
Oconee Audubon Society
P.O. Box 81082 Non Profit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Athens, Georgia 30608-1082 Athens, GA Permit No. 41